Strategy Page on one of the longest-serving (and still serving) weapons in the US arsenal:
M2 machine gun (via Wikimedia)
A U.S. Army facility that is upgrading older 12.7mm (.50 caliber) M2 noticed that a lot of the guns coming in were quite old. M2 production began in 1921 and some three million have been produced since then. No one every kept track of how long M2s lasted. That question was recently answered when an M2 came in with serial number 324, meaning it was produced during the first year and was 94 years old. The serial number was on the receiver, the heaviest component of the M2 (25.5 kg/55 pounds in the most common version) and the one component that rarely wears out. In contrast the barrel is worn out after about 3,000 rounds and most other components eventually need replacement because of wear or damage. But the receiver is quite a sturdy block of machined metal.
Unfortunately for 324 the extent of the latest M2 upgrades means that it is often considered cheaper to scrap pre-World War II M2s rather than perform a number of accumulated fixes and modifications. But since 324 is the oldest to show up so far it will be displayed as a museum piece.
The M2 has lasted so long because it proved to be the most reliable and durable machine-gun of any caliber ever produced. That durability meant receivers would, if they could avoid battle damage or accidents, serve on and on. The army is seeing proof of that as more and more quite ancient receivers come back for which are mandatory and army-wide upgrades. Because of thus a lot of weapons NCOs have been checking their inventories and as they did that the word began spreading on the Internet (even army armorers have their own online forums) that there were a lot of very old M2 receivers out there.
Technically, M2 #324 couldn’t have been made in 1921 because the M2 wasn’t adopted until 1933. The M2’s ancestors, the M1921 and M1921A1, were declared obsolete during WW2.
Comment by Daniel E. Watters — December 14, 2015 @ 09:08